


Holiday Exposure

by Petra



Category: Michael: Tuesdays & Thursdays
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-24
Updated: 2011-12-24
Packaged: 2017-10-28 01:36:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,187
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/302284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Petra/pseuds/Petra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Michael doesn't do well with crowds or with food with the wrong texture.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Holiday Exposure

**Author's Note:**

  * For [team_fen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/team_fen/gifts).



Michael is as sensitive to advertising as the next person, and he knows he's supposed to enjoy the ByWard Market, which has everything anyone could ever want to buy or eat, as long as they want to buy or eat it in the company of all the people in the market, crowding in and out of the shops.

It gets worse when it's almost the holidays and the stores are horribly crowded. He's even figured out three alternate bus routes so he can get home without sharing the bus with people who might have been there recently.

"It's not the stores that bring up my anxiety level, it's the people," he tells Dr. Storper, who nods and makes a note.

"It's very difficult for anyone to have a store that doesn't have any people in it," Dr. Storper says, as if Michael hasn't figured that out. "What do you do when you're shopping other places? The grocery store?"

"I don't think about it," he says. "Or I try not to, really hard. I don't make eye contact with anyone, and I know exactly where everything I need is, so I'm in and out as fast as I can go."

"A tactical strike."

"Surgical, even," Michael says, and explains how he sets up his grocery lists aisle by aisle so there's no chance of backtracking or forgetting something.

"But if you're shopping somewhere out of town, or in a different store, what do you do?"

Michael tries to remember the last time he went into an unfamiliar grocery store. Not since he moved last, and he hasn't moved in years. "I scout it out. Keep my eyes on the shelves and the thingies that hang down and tell you what's in every aisle, and try not to trip on anybody." Thinking about being in an unfamiliar store, even one as simple and theoretically welcoming as a grocery store, makes him need to pay attention to his breathing. "I really, really like the internet. Internet shopping. You can buy everything online now, so you don't have to go into places like ByWard Market to find some special thing."

Dr. Storper gets that momentary blank look he has when he's planning something and he's not ready to tell Michael about it. "That's true," he said. "And how's your food avoidance coming along?"

"Mayonnaise," Michael says, and almost vomits just saying the word. "I don't see the point." But it's easier to talk about that than it is to bring up all the holiday shopping and the crowds of people, all of them looking at him.

*

On Thursday, Dr. Storper says, "I know you've been to the mall. How do you handle that?"

"Poorly."

"Yes, but you do navigate it reasonably well. You get where you're going. You've asked people for the time, that sort of thing, which is a big improvement over where you were when we started."

Michael holds on to the thought of that, the exposure that he'd done successfully, and doesn't think about all the times he choked. It doesn't matter how many times he has to try something if he can manage it eventually. That's Dr. Storper's rule for exposures, and even though the little anxious voice in Michael's head still thinks it's bullshit, he uses his rational brain to tell the little voice that it's not a psychiatrist, and it should listen to Dr. Storper even if it won't listen to him. "I know where everything is, at least unless they change the stores. Like when they took out that place where you could get pretzels and replaced it with an ice cream store. I never told the ice cream people that if I wanted a pretzel I definitely didn't want ice cream, because it's not like they could make me one. I'm sure they took out the oven and everything when they put in the freezers. But it's not like they stopped selling pretzels and started selling, I don't know, specialty potato chips or something. That would have made sense. The one stop salt shop."

"Maybe other people have more of a taste for sweet things than you do."

"I guess. Those were pretty good pretzels. I could more or less handle them unless they got mustard on them, and even then I could eat them if I tore off the part of the pretzel with mustard and wrapped it in a napkin and threw it away first."

"That's good. You have a mustard coping mechanism."

"It doesn't matter now," Michael says, and just thinking about the pretzels with their coarse salt and that weird brown crust-rind is making his mouth water. He doesn't know where he'd get one these days, since the pretzel place disappeared. "I mean, the last time I had to avoid mustard was a long time ago now."

"Right. So when you go to the mall--"

"I haven't been in a while."

"But when you go," Dr. Storper says, and he's definitely got something on his mind, or he would let Michael deflect him. "When you go, you're using the same coping skills and mechanisms that you would need to go to the ByWard Market. If you wanted to go there."

Michael sighs. "I don't really want to at all. I just brought it up last session because, because I saw this commercial for this restaurant, and it reminded me that my boss decided we should have our holiday party there this year. It's all Indian, and I don't know much about Indian food, but if I tell him I can't even go within ten blocks of the place without taking three Ativan first, he's going to think I'm crazy."

"Suffering mental distress," Dr. Storper says, gently.

"Well, I am." Michael has the taste of curry and bile in the back of his throat already. He likes curry, sometimes, but not if it means he's surrounded by a bunch of other people, and not if it has a whole lot of other things in it, and not if he has to be at a restaurant he's never seen before. "I don't want to go into this place cold."

"Ah." Dr. Storper nods and makes a note. "We could go there together, you and I. A kind of restaurant exposure. I know you're working on your yogurt issues, and we could double up with a raita exposure, if you could handle all the variables at once."

The thought of yogurt isn't much better than the thought of curry surrounded by Carlos and everybody else from the office, all feeling festive and merry and like they want to go shop till they drop as soon as they're done in the restaurant. "I could probably handle some naan," Michael says. "If it's not spicy. Or too garlicky. You know."

"Great," Dr. Storper says. He smiles that tight little smile that's as good as a pat on the back, especially considering how much Michael dislikes it when people he doesn't know touch him randomly. He can handle it from Dr. Storper, but that's been a whole other set of exposures so that he could navigate the other exposures without shying away from his psychiatrist. "When do you want to go there?"

"It should be soon." Michael frowns. "But tomorrow's Friday. I bet you have plans."

His smile is a little tighter and worse than before, but it's still there. "Now I do, if tomorrow works for you."

Michael takes a steadying breath. "Okay, thinking about there is only putting my anxiety up to seven, and if you're there, at least I know I can leave if I have to and I'd pay you back."

"Mm." Dr. Storper nods and makes another note. "Seven-o'clock?"

"Sure," Michael says, and refuses to think about it.

He doesn't look at Claire on the way out, except to wave to her. He doesn't want to know what she'd say if she found out he can't go anywhere with her on Friday because he has to have dinner with Dr. Storper, but dinner with Dr. Storper and Claire would be really hard and not so much an exposure as a total nightmare.

*

"Okay, I'm three blocks away," Michael says into his phone. "The crowds are getting thicker."

"You're doing great," Dr. Storper says. He insisted that he wouldn't meet Michael more than a block from the restaurant. "Just two more blocks, and then we can walk in together."

Michael dodges around a woman with a baby on her hip and a bouquet of shopping bags in her other hand. As he passes her, she says to the woman on the other side of her, "I need a new belt," and the woman laughs, even though it doesn't sound funny to Michael.

People say the weirdest things when they think no one's listening. Michael tries not to listen to other people, but he's not wearing his earbuds like he does on the bus, so walking past people, he hears parts of all their conversations, a girl telling her mother, "But I need a leather jacket this year, I do, or no one's going to talk to me," and her mother saying, "You don't need that kind of people."

Michael doesn't need the kind of people who want him to eat in strange restaurants that mean he has to go there to scope out the ground first, but then again he needs the paycheck he gets from them.

There's a man holding a red-faced, screaming toddler by the hand ahead of him, and he knows how the kid feels. "I hate this," he says to Dr. Storper, instead of breaking down and screaming like the kid is, waving his chubby hands with mittens attached by clips and strings. "I really, really hate this."

"Just keep walking a little farther," Dr. Storper says. "You're going to be fine."

"I'm at about nine right now," Michael says, and then an old man almost runs him down with a walker. "Sorry, sorry, sorry, I should just go home."

"I'm coming towards you," says the voice in his ear, as calm and reasonable as ever. "Can you meet me halfway?"

They plotted it all out on a map over the phone so that if Michael needed more support, he could get it. "I think so," Michael says, and keeps the phone at his ear but pays more attention to where people are on the sidewalk. And less attention to who the people are, because if they're people they're all intimidating, but if they're just obstacles to walk around then they're not a big deal. He walks around all kinds of obstacles all the time to get where he's going.

He meets Dr. Storper at the next corner, not quite where they'd arranged, but farther than Michael would've gone on his own. "That was pretty good," Dr. Storper says, and falls into step next to him.

"I didn't trip over anybody," Michael says. "There are all of these people with little kids and I get afraid that I won't see one, and then I'll step on them, and they'll yell, 'My baby, my baby!' and call the cops."

"But you didn't, did you?"

"No," Michael says. It's not about not feeling the fear, it's about acknowledging the fear and moving forward anyway. He knows that, and he doesn't want that lecture again right now. That's definitely psychiatrist-talk, and while he's okay with doing exposures like this, he doesn't want all the people on the block to know he's hanging out with his psychiatrist, going to dinner with him, spending time with him that's not really a session.

It's more important than a session because it's more real-world applicable, but people who haven't tried it wouldn't necessarily understand that, and the last thing Michael wants is for everyone in the Market area to stare at him. And they would, because who needs someone to hold their hand while they eat dinner in a nice restaurant?

Haveli is a very nice restaurant, very fancy compared to the kinds of places he normally goes--ornate and esoteric and probably normal for Indian food that doesn't come in a white cardboard box, but he wouldn't know--and their menu has a bunch of stuff that Michael has never tasted. And the prices freak him out right off the bat. "Maybe we should go," he says, patting his wallet. He's pretty sure Dr. Storper can afford it, or write it off, or whatever he does with the kind of expenses he racks up when he's doing exposures with Michael.

"Is it outside of your price range?" Dr. Storper asks, keeping his voice soft.

"Not really," Michael says. "I just, I, I don't want to make you spend a whole bunch of money when it might be a terrible restaurant."

"It'll be fine," Dr. Storper says.

"You don't know that for sure, not unless you've eaten here before."

"I haven't." Dr. Storper shrugs once. "But it smells good, and it's a nice place. I'm not anxious about it."

Michael works on his breathing and pats his pockets down, making sure he has his Ativan to hand if he needs a second one. He doesn't, yet, but he's thinking about it, gauging how badly he needs it. "So you're okay?"

"Yes. Are you?"

Michael puts his hands flat on the table. "Yes. Fine. Yes."

Dr. Storper smiles, but it looks wrong. "Good. Let me know if things change."

The meal is all right. Nothing great, a little too sweet, and it takes forever and ever for the waiter to come every time. Time stretches out when he's anxious, but it might take too long anyway. Michael doesn't like talking to waiters, but it's easier than talking to waitresses. One of the waitresses is pretty, and he doesn't know if he can look at her, let alone talk to her. "If she's my waitress next time I'm here, then I don't know how I'm going to order," he says to Dr. Storper.

"You're having a breakthrough already," Dr. Storper says, clapping his hands once. "If you're talking about coming back here like it's a done deal, that's great. You're going to do it, then?"

"I guess." Michael shakes his head. "But if she's my waitress. I can't say things to her. What if it comes out wrong and I order braised pig bladder and she's a Muslim and that's against her religion, or cow's head on a plate and she's Hindu and that's against her religion, and she hates me, so she spits in my food? Then I won't be able to eat the food."

"You could use the same protocol we worked out for the Chinese restaurant."

Michael looks down at the tablecloth, which has a brown stain on it. It might be curry, or it might be blood. Maybe one of the waitresses stabbed a customer with a fork when he asked for the wrong thing and mispronounced the name of her hometown, but the waiter had a Toronto accent. If he could just have the waiter, he would be okay. He knows it. "I can point. If I point really, really carefully, because paneer is disgusting and I wouldn't be able to eat anything with paneer in it."

"Like you avoid pointing to things with broccoli in them in the Chinese restaurant."

"I don't know how they make broccoli so spongy. I like broccoli. Well, the stem parts."

"And that's fine," Dr. Storper says, calmly.

His calm is not as contagious as he wants it to be, but Michael feels like he's getting somewhere. All the way through dinner, anyway, and if he can make it through this dinner, he can probably make it through dinner with the people he works with. None of them talk to him except for Carlos, and Carlos almost never talks to him if he has other people to talk to, so it's not like Michael will have to say much. "I think I can do this again," he says, not because he has to, but because it's probably true. "I mean, I don't want to, but I can eat the food without gagging."

The waiter comes by with the check right then, and Michael wishes the floor would open and swallow him. He wants it to do that a lot, but it never does. "I hope you enjoyed your meal," he says, and Michael knows the waiter overheard him.

"It was delicious," he says, like his mother told him he should always say when he was in somebody else's house even if he had to excuse himself to the washroom in the middle of the meal because there was nothing he could eat at all.

"Very nice," Dr. Storper says. He sounds less frantic than Michael does, but the waiter can't hear the way Michael's heart is pounding.

"Excellent. Come again soon," the waiter says, and leaves them.

"He hates me," Michael says.

Dr. Storper shakes his head slightly. "He might, right now. Does that bother you?"

"Yeah, it bothers me. If I can't talk to the waiter and I can't talk to the waitresses, then I can't talk to anyone in the whole restaurant." Michael wraps his hand around the bottle of Ativan in his pocket like it's a rattly security blanket.

"There's a trick with waiters," Dr. Storper says. "If you're coming back, and you want them to act like they're glad to see you."

Michael frowns. "Should I give him a compliment?" he asks, thinking of the time they went to the mall and he had to make a list of all the compliments he could give people, even though he never got to the point of being able to say things like that to strangers. He can barely even say them to people he knows.

"A big tip will be better."

"Oh. Right." Michael figures out his share down to the cent, then doubles it, ignoring the way it makes his pulse race to think about spending that much money on one meal.

Dr. Storper puts in a good amount of money, too, enough that Michael wants to apologize, but he doesn't have to. He just wants to. "Are you ready to go?" he asks, after Michael has counted out the money and made absolutely sure they left plenty and more than plenty.

The question freezes Michael for a second. Leaving means going into the Market again, dodging around all the late shoppers and all the people who are going to dinner or going home from dinner. But he made it through the first time, so he can probably do it again. "I think so. Can I call you if I need to?"

"Yes," Dr. Storper says, and they get up to leave.

Michael makes it onto the bus without calling Dr. Storper by pretending all the people are moving boxes and he's in a video game. He texts Dr. Storper from the bus to let him know that he's okay, and to say thank you.

The holiday party is still going to suck, but at least Michael knows he'll survive it.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to my beta. Happy Yuletide!


End file.
